A MIGHTY HEART sss
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Adapted from the memoir by Pearl’s widow, A Mighty Heart functions primarily as a suspense film, and it manages to be gripping even though the outcome is already known. Mariane Pearl was pregnant when the couple flew to Karachi, Pakistan, in December 2001. As South Asia bureau chief for the Journal, Danny was following up on the arrest of would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid and exploring a possible link between Al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence. After he left to interview an Islamic spiritual leader and never returned, Mariane spent the next four weeks working closely with U.S. and Pakistani law enforcement officials to find him, their hunt endlessly complicated by political tensions between India, Pakistan, and the West. But the story of Mariane Pearl, a professional journalist herself, is most valuable in showing how the kidnappers and the rescue team fought to control the media coverage and how responsible journalism ought to function in an age of Islamic extremism.
Both the kidnappers and the rescuers factor the media into their strategies, though the competitiveness of international news organizations seems to favor the kidnappers. Their first communication is an e-mail sent to Jang, the Washington Post, and the New York Times, with attached photographs of a captive Pearl that circle the globe. A media frenzy erupts, and before long Fox, CNN, and Al Jazeera have all set up cameras outside the private home that serves as the rescuers’ command center. After another e-mail announces that Danny will be killed in 24 hours unless Pakistani prisoners are released from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo, the rescuers mount a media counterattack: clad in a Kashmiri shawl, Mariane grants a televised interview to CNN. She resolves not to oblige the kidnappers by losing her cool, but after the interview one of the CNN people expresses dismay that she didn’t break down on camera.
